Strategic consensus on manufacturing strategy: operators' and managers' perceptions

Paper in proceeding, 2015

This paper joins the discussion on the need for trade-offs among competitive priorities in manufacturing strategy (MS) and builds on earlier works on strategic consensus on MS by addressing the purpose to examine the level of strategic consensus between different organisational levels regarding the competitive priorities quality, delivery, flexibility and cost. Survey data from 96 employees at one Swedish assembly plant show that the employees rank the priorities significantly different. Further, white collar workers rank six of the 16 studied competitive priority abilities significantly higher than blue collar workers do.